


A Laud for a Witch

by Cerch



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, F/F, Getting Back Together, Mutual Pining, Ritual Sex, Winter, Witches
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-10
Updated: 2016-12-10
Packaged: 2018-09-02 15:00:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8671933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cerch/pseuds/Cerch
Summary: Half a millennia ago Elena became the Witch of the Forest and Mithian became the Witch of the Winds instead of just Elena and Mithian who loved each other. But Mithian made a promise - and Elena intends to hold her to it.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Emjayelle](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Emjayelle/gifts).



> Dear Emjayelle,  
> Happy Yule! I loved all of your prompts and I rather wish I could write several of them, but this land of witches is where the muses decided to take me. I hope you will enjoy it <3
> 
> Thank you everyone who gave me words of support, especially S, who is always there to hold my hand when I need it and bravely helped me to whip this into shape!
> 
> Also a thank you to our wonderful mods without whom we wouldn't get to enjoy all these lovely gifts!

Autumn has set the forest on fire; it burns bright, with red, yellow, brown, green, silver, gold, violet, blue – and countless other colours that human tongues don’t have names for. The Witch of the Forest, naked as the day she was born, dances amongst the flames, celebrating the end of summer and the start of a new season, death and rebirth.

Her hair is pale gold, her skin freckled and just barely browned after the summer sun, but the flames cast their reflections upon her, turning her into a flash of colour as she dances, faster and faster, faster, _faster_.

Her laughter runs high to meet the winds arriving from the north.

With the winds arrives winter and the Witch of the Winds; her face is white, her eyes as dark as her hair, but the smile on her lips is gentle as she watches the fire of autumn flare and fade, making room for snow and the rest it brings. And most of all, maybe, she watches the Witch of the Forest, the curve of her spine, the wild precision of her steps, the delicious fullness of her breasts – for the Witch of the Winds can be sweet and kind, like the slightest summer breeze, but especially come winter she is also free and hungry.

“Elena,” she calls, voice a puff of cold air, even as the last flames fall and frost starts creeping up the blackened stalks of the trees.

Elena, for once she was something other than the Witch of the Forest, glides to a halt, colour high on her cheeks and eyes shining.

“Mithian,” she greets her, “you have hardly visited me this summer.”

It’s not meant as an accusation, but Mithian feels the pang all the same. Her realm is vast, stretching to seas where the sea witches sing to her winds, to lands where gods of old still rule. Elena’s forest was almost as vast, once; now it’s broken up, pieces drifting apart without guardians, others claimed by younger witches eager to make them their own.

Mithian places her cool hand on Elena’s burning waist and kisses her cheek, nosing her way into her hair and hiding her apology there. She wishes she could kiss her properly, on her mouth, on her breasts, between her legs, but this is not what they are, haven’t been for the hundreds of years since they tied themselves to their posts.

“It’s for the best,” Mithian had claimed, and Elena had cried, and her tears had made her new forest bloom with thousands of new plants with inexplicable colours and fantastical berries.

Elena pushes her back, hands on her shoulders, and smiles widely, like she knows exactly where Mithian’s mind is, or perhaps simply as an old friend glad for a reunion.

“Come,” she says, and her hands slide down, one grabbing Mithian’s hand tightly. She shines. “Do you remember? You promised me that after half a millennia we would dance again.”

Mithian has’t forgotten, and now the five hundred years have passed. She had thought she would have moved on by now, but she has not, and Elena has evidently not forgotten either. “Is your dance not finished?” she asks.

“You missed this one, sure.” Mithian dares a glance at her face; Elena’s mouth is curled into a mischievous smile. “But midwinter is coming soon.”

“Since when does the forest dance for midwinter?” Mithian never stays for long and is ashamed to notice she doesn’t even know when Elena changed the rhythm of her spells.

“I dance for the trees they hack down, to give them peace and to strengthen the healing,” Elena says carelessly, like it doesn’t bother her, but a single vine curls itself into her hair, gentle with comfort.

“You could drive them away. I could drive them away,” Mithian offers.

Elena tugs her to follow, looking away as she shakes her head. “They do it to keep away the cold and the dark. I heal the forest and we prevail.”

Mithian doesn’t say how less and less prevails each year. Elena knows.

~*~

Mithian leaves to spread her winds southwards with a promise to return come midwinter. She dances ruthless storms and refreshing breezes, swirls snow off the ground where it has set and blows it around and makes it her shroud.

At the edge of sea where she drives cold air into the waves the Witch of the Southern Mountains greets her. She is old, not as old as the mountains, but older than the oldest tree there, and she wears her face wrinkled and walks amongst the villages as a goat herder. “Don’t forget your roots. They’re with humans and always will be,” she tells the other witches, but it’s not what she tells Mithian now.

“Did a dragonling bite you in the arse, lass?” she asks sharply, and Mithian stops mid-leap, hands raised to create another gust of winds.

“The sea needs the air,” she says, but embarrassment stains her cheeks. She hasn’t been this close to losing control since she was a willowy child, playing in the fields of her parent’s estates.

“Sure it does. And you’ve fed it enough for next winter as well.” She pokes her staff sharply against Mithian’s side and then squints at her expectantly. “Did you finally sleep with that lass of yours in the forest? Nahh, you wouldn’t be wound up as tight as a duck’s shaft if you had.” Mithian really tries not to think about that one too closely. “A baby goat has more sense than you. It’s a wonder you haven’t turned into a pine with all that pining.” She scratches her nose. “It’s been known to happen.” She squints at Mithian again, as if looking for some sign that she has started to become treeish.

“It would never work out,” Mithian tries.

The staff pokes at her again, moving faster than the eye can follow. “You might have believed that a few centuries ago,” she says. “Now you’re just afraid you she doesn’t want you back. Sort it out and stop blowing your winds into my weak, ancient bones.”

She taps her staff into the ground, once, twice, and disappears.

~*~

Mithian continues spreading her winds, keeping her temper in check. At the southern sea she makes love to a lovely water spirit named Freya and in the east she fucks a black witch who has enough rage to match her storm. All she accomplishes is a vague feeling of guilt.

~*~

She finds Elena standing at the edge of a human bonfire, a woollen cloak wrapped around her. The people sing and dance, and feast on the animals of Elena’s forest, burned over the flame fed by her trees. The wind curls around Mithian’s fists, but Elena turns and grabs her hands firmly.

“Don’t be silly,” she says and looks Mithian straight and hard into eye. “Listen. They’re singing and dancing for me. For all of us.”

Mithian stills, and the wind whistles away.  She listens. Their language is strange but beautiful, and she understands it because its message belongs to her as well. It’s a laud to nature, to sun, rain, wind, the earth feeding their fields – and to the forest and her queen, who watches over them favourably.

“They call me a queen,” Elena says, laughing. “I’ve always liked the sound of that.”

Mithian tries to see some trace of sadness on her but she seems genuinely happy, almost embarrassed.

“Do you see? They’re mine to protect too. They’re like – not my children, that’d be weird, but like grandchildren of my sister or something like that.”

“Something like that, obviously.” Mithian smiles, so widely her face hurts. Her heart is ready to burst under the onslaught of love she suddenly feels, yet she is unable to look away.

Elena stares at her intently for a moment, then grins. “That’s the best smile you have given me in twenty-seven years.” Mithian blinks, thinking _surely not_ , but Elena is already tugging her away from the people.

“The pond is frozen,” Elena yells her over her shoulder as she leaps over the snowy ground, “It’s going to be perfect!”

Mithian sprints after her, heart singing, dodging under the low hanging branches of the forest’s edge, threading through trunks and gliding over cliffs, following Elena’s blond hair which shines like a beacon in the moonlight.

At the banks of the pond Elena trips, and rolls onto the ice, laughing breathlessly. Mithian lets her winds lift her and carry her over. She looks down at where Elena is splayed laughing on top of her cloak, naked body on display, and extends her hand.

“Are you ready to dance?” Elena asks, fumbling the lock of her cloak open with colour rising on her cheeks, before she finally takes Mithian’s hand.

“Why were you wearing that? It’s not like you feel the cold.” Mithian asks, suddenly desperate for more time, and pulls her up. She is close, so close that their noses are almost touching, and for a moment Mithian’s breath lodges painfully under her breastbone.

Elena shrugs and steps away, a bit awkward, colour still high on her cheeks. “It’s comfy.”  It takes Mithian a moment to remember her question.

Suddenly the whole pond seems to be blanketed in uncertainty; maybe Elena too wonders if this is a good idea, if she even wants to weave her spells with Mithian after all this time.

After a moment where Mithian almost says _Let’s not,_ Elena spreads her arms, determined and beautiful – _inevitable_ , Mithian thinks – and says “Follow me,” and leaps into her spell.

Magic is what the world was once made from, and it’s still everywhere; in the howl of winds, the bite of cold, the warmth of the sun and the bloom of flowers. Under the ice the water starts glowing with power, and the trees by the banks start humming in their sleep. Every spin Elena takes weaves the magic to take shape, to bring rest and healing. The moonlight falls on her skin and transforms into thousands of tiny silver sparks of power that glitter behind her, tears for those lost.

Mithian takes a deep breath, straightens her back, and lets Elena’s spell take her.

It’s been so long since they last lay together and let their magics mingle – first, she feels like she is all but drowning in the currents of power, just another fleck of moonlight melding into Elena’s magic, before she finds herself, _her_ power, and her hand on Elena’s lower back.

Their eyes meet, endless dark wells of power, and they spin and twirl and shine with the power of fallen stars – and then the spell changes from lament and healing to a thing of pure power. There’s no part to their bodies that doesn’t touch at some point; one moment Elena’s back is pressed against Mithian’s breasts, the next they’re pressed front to front, faces against each other’s necks and hands roaming far and wild. Mithian knows, even before they fall down, that this kind of spell can only end in one way, and she is too exhilarated to be terrified. And then they’re on the snow, mouths seeking each other.

Nothing, not even before, has ever felt like this; burning all-consuming need, with all the power of winter behind them and Mithian’s love overflowing through her skin. She bites Elena’s mouth, her neck, and Elena makes tiny little sounds of pleasure that get absorbed into the spell around them. It’s so much that she thinks she might die from it, and she desperately grabs Elena’s hand clutching her lower back and brings it down, between her legs. Elena looks her in the eye, and the well of power ripples, and Mithian finds herself on her back, with Elena bent over her, head between her legs, licking around and then in – a being of burning light and pleasure, bleeding into the Earth. And she pulls Elena’s cunt down to her mouth and drowns all her screams there until the spell has taken everything, and they’re dropped into a perfect, exhausted orgasm as their magic soars free to heal the world.

~*~

When she wakes up from her cradle of snow, Elena is sitting next to her, almost touching, gazing into the sky. “What do you suppose we did?” she asks without moving an inch.

The world around them is still asleep, but its veins are filled with power that Mithian can see even when she closes her eyes. “I think we healed it. All of it,” she says, and laughs at the enormous absurdity of it.

She reaches out to caress Elena’s back, but she flinches away and Mithian drops her hand as if burned. “Are you going to leave?” Elena asks, slowly and quietly, each word painful between them, carving bleeding wounds into Mithian’s chest.

“I–” Mithian says, and sits up, a vast emptiness opening inside her.

Elena lifts her arm, and a small falcon glides down from the sky, landing on it with a pleased hoot.

“Because if you are I don’t think you should come back. It’s not fair.” She pets the falcon gently, still refusing to look towards Mithian.

“And if I stay?”

Elena turns. Her eyes are glistening with unshed tears, but Mithian sees the hope, feels it reflecting every ounce of her own heart.

“Then you stop this bullshit about how we are better off as friends,” Elena bites out.

Mithian surges forward, and the falcon flies into the air with a displeased screech as Elena’s hands tangle in her hair.

“I’m sorry,” she says against Elena’s lips. And then, “I love you. I’ve always loved you, and I’m an idiot.”

“I know,” Elena says, and kisses her sweetly and carefully, with more love than there surely exists in the whole universe.

~*~

Once upon a time the Witch of Winds loved the Witch of the Forest, and she loved her back until and beyond the time when magic faded from the world and their bones crumbled to dust.


End file.
